So im writing a best man speech - never done this before so i don't want to make it too harsh (especially with the brides family being quite conservative Christians!)

But i have something that i think could be a gold mine but cant think about how to make it into a joke without being too harsh.

Essentially the groom was born on 14 september 1987. on that day the biggest ever NY times newspaper was printed - 2000 pages, weighing over 12 pounds. it was titled "a unfortunate needless waste".

Im doing a bit in the speech saying "groom was born on..... on this day XYZ happened" - i really want to include something to do with this paper and the waste reference. but it needs toning down / making funny. it the "unfortunate needless waste" thing can be scrapped / changed - it hasnt got to be accurate. just reasonably funny.

Any ideas? i know there are some jokers on here!

Thanks BHW

Edit: To all you marketers plugging the CB best man speech book, dominating the serps, i hate you. lol

I once heard that something happened on 14 September 1987 that was called, a unfortunate needless waste. Immediately I thought of -insert grooms name-, but then I found out they were speaking about a NYT issue.

Then end with ' I nailed the bride last week ' or ' congrats on the pregnancy and we are all praying with you that the baby is not black ' (assuming both the man and woman are white, otherwise replace black with white or Chinese etc ... lol)

Definitely make it funny man. Throw some jokes in there. You are the best man, and when you give a speech just make sure it isnt depressing. Don't make it sound like your never gonna see the groom again lol. I have heard some depressing wedding speeches, and its like come on! Its not a funeral.

Childhood embarrassing memories is always a good place to start, then throw something in there of how lucky the bride is and call it a day.

Make the girls laugh, make people smile, and dont make it sad. Those are my tips. Good luck

lol thanks for the advice guys, its overall very light hearted and fun - just generally poking light fun at the groom, thanking everyone, prasing the bride and bridemaids, toasting etc etc. just trying to think if there was any way to get that little fact in. if i cant make it lighter i wont be using it - its too harsh as it is.

Assuming that you can get hold of the paper, you could start the speech by holding up the paper and saying something along the lines of "On the blah blah of Sept 1987, the NYT headline was "unforunate needless waste" and go on to describe this. Follow by a pause and "....this also happens to be his birthday" or something like that.

Start it off like, "On Sep 14th, 1987, The NY Times published a 12lb edition, over 2,000 pages that was titled an "unfortunate and needless waste", little did they know that (grooms name) would also share that creation date, all I think we can all agree, that until he met (brides name) he was in pretty unfortunate shape himself!".....

I have done some Best Man speeches and I generally go with a story surrounding how we met (cleaning it up if it were a spurious situation), a story of where the grooms qualities shined through, some jokes about how skeptical you were of the bride but how she won you over and that you knew she'd be great for him because you had never seen him act the way he did before in your life. Wrap it with congratulations, blessing, and a toast.

Note that adblockers might block our captcha, and other functionality on BHW so if you don't see the captcha or see reduced functionality please disable adblockers to ensure full functionality, note we only allow relevant management verified ads on BHW.